From a family business started by my great grandfather, been running for over 100 years.
Things I learned from my dad and grand parents.
1. Being decent to people will cover all kinds of other problems.
2. A great reputation for doing good work is probably the best sales tool to have.
3. You can pay your people well if you charge premium rates. (and do premium or higher quality work)
4. If you pay your people well you just have a generally happier work force.
5. If you trust your people you don't have to micro-manage them.
6. Giving trust to people can be hard sometimes when things don't go well. (but you need to keep doing it anyways, even when you get taken advantage of from time to time)
7. Hiring mature and decent people fixes a lot of problems in advance.
8. Having a happy work environment is more important than efficiency.
9. The higher up you are, the first you are to take a pay cut, provides respect, stability and confidence in the rest of the company.
10. Don't beat up your vendors on price, and when things get rough, they will take care of you.
There is a lot more.
Me personally:
1. Being technically minded I had to learn to just hang out and talk with people. This was hard because I felt it was inefficient, but the long term, knowing people personally helped when there was difficult technical issues to solve while working with them.
2. Don't make changes to other peoples lives without consulting them first or at least giving them notice (if they don't have a choice). Changes to software, their computer, their job role, etc... Too many horror stories about this kind of thing really frustrating people. Thankfully, I avoided many of these issues by learning from others before making these kinds of mistakes to often.
3. It can take time to really understand a customer or a business. It's just hard to be patient as a technically minded person to sit and understand why something is done when it seems to be done so poorly.
4. Everything doesn't have to be fixed. I thoroughly enjoy fixing and improving things, but sometimes it's just fine to let something be clunky. Why? Because sometimes that clunky thing will stay working under every possible difficult circumstance, and an efficient issue requires calling me when it breaks...
5. Stand down. I've had to give up on very important issues because it would have had too much impact on other people. I wanted to fix product ids because they were based on a 1980s limitation, but the fight to win this change would cause too much turmoil, so I let it go, and I am glad I did, because I never really had to use these product ids myself anyways, and my concerns were theoretical.
6. Patience on change. I've found that when I see something I want to improve (from sales processes to manufacturing to IT related items) that if I bring up the issue to those involved, offer some ideas, and then leave it alone. When everyone now knows there is a solution waiting in the background, they start to notice the issues more keenly (instead of the frog in the pot) and then when they've had enough, they will be motivated for change instead of me pushing people towards it.